Decades of breast cancer research has lead to steady improvements in survival rates, but those improvements aren't shared equally among black woman who are more likely to die of the disease.

An aggressive form of the disease called triple negative breast cancer is attacking black women at a much higher rate than white women.

Advertisement

Studies suggest the disparities are due to a complex combination of genetic, environmental, and societal factors, but mostly doctors said there are not as many ways to treat triple negative.

Rachel Alcina was diagnosed with an invasive cancer in May of 2014.

"I had discovered it and it felt like a grape. It was a fluke that I found it," Alcina said.

She immediately sought treatment and after chemotherapy and reconstructive surgery she's recovered beautifully.

"The day after Thanksgiving that same year I was diagnosed cancer free and got my badge to prove it," she said.

While in treatment, she met a woman with triple negative cancer.

"Some days she felt great and other days she felt she was just really not feeling well and I was there to pick at her and make her happy and cheer her up," Alcina said.

The rate of triple negative breast cancer is twice as high in black women as compared to white women.

"No question, it's more aggressive than the other types of breast cancers, so we treat it more aggressively with chemotherapy," said Adam Riker, a surgical oncologist at University Medical Center and employee of LSU Health New Orleans School of Medicine.

Riker said the biggest issue is finding other ways to treat it than standard chemotherapy because right now the medications used to treat other types of cancer don't work as well for triple negative.

"When we look at groups of patients whether they're triple negative or not and look at each one of their staging. The patients who have triple negative don't do as well. They're out come is poorer compared to those who are not," Riker said.

He said two-thirds of his breast cancer patients are African-American, and in a typical week at least two of the six to eight newly diagnosed patients have triple negative.

"It's definitely more aggressive and patients don't do that well, but I don't want to say you're going to die if you have triple negative," Riker said. "There's plenty of patients out there that we treat with triple-negative that don't reoccur that are cured."

This summer the National Institutes of Health launched a study to investigate how genetic and biological factors contribute to breast cancer risk among black women.

The genomes of 20,000 black women with breast cancer are being compared with those of 20,000 black women who do not have breast cancer. The research also includes the genomes of white women who have breast cancer.

Riker said although there's more research in triple negative breast cancer than any other type, still more research is needed. LSU Health New Orleans is conducting a unique medical trial targeting the immune system to attack triple negative breast cancer cells.